Taken from the TSRLP boards...
Something about KotOR III and how they made The Force Unleashed instead, or rather, how they almost made a KotOR universe-based game. Maybe not necessarily KotOR III. Even so, it's annoying that we could've gotten a KotOR related game instaed of a movie-era game.

Personally, I think the movie era is a huge dead horse. All the books and games and blah blah blah all this crap that's jumbled together. And there's the TV show coming up too. TFU vs. a KotOR game should be a no-brainer to them. But no! They're all like "grrr Vader = $$$".

I can't see anything like that happening though. Given today's video game budgets, stuff needs to be as appealing and accessible to the "common folk" as possible.

...and the "common folk" only know generic "stormtrooper tie-fighter skywalker" Star Wars. I just don't get it. Was KotOR II that bad? I mean, why wouldn't they want to keep up with the franchise? At least in the form of making games set in the same era. Ugh. It's very frustrating.

As the gaming industry grows, so do game development costs. And with the millions of dollors involved in game development comes great risk. Why create a project based around an unfamiliar setting to all but Star Wars fans when you can create a project based in a setting familiar to everybody, fan or no fan?

It's all a matter of Lucasarts weighing up the risks of different strategies to determine which one would allow them to create as much revenue as possible. It's sad, but it's true.

Any game that can't create its own universe in Star Wars won't get good attention. Without stormtroopers, the majority of the consumers might not recognize what it's all about.

The genius of Bioware and the requirement of RPGs in general is immersion and exploration of a new universe. An action game doesn't make you travel as much and there is hardly enough time to properly immerse yourself, considering they don't last longer then 10-12 hours these days. Starting from a well known setting allows them to immerse the player from the start, without the need of an introduction into the universe.

KotOR, the universe, is not popular enough yet for non-RPG games to be based around it.

I honestly don't see what the problem is. Sure, a KOTOR 3 would be good but I don't think there's anything wrong with TFU. Most of the EU that's between the trilogies only takes place right after ROTS or right before ANH anyhow.

Knights of the Old Republic is not that different from normal Star Wars. I mean, even the ship setup is the same.

Good Guys: Ugly craft, except for the Player Ship which is a rugged smuggling craft and is thus somewhat Anti-Heroic, allowing it to be cool.

Bad Guys: Star Destroyers. 'Nuff said.

There's a lot of backstory around that 50 year period between 30 BBY and 20 ABY, and you don't even have to stick your hands into the NJO, Swarm War, and Legacy. Praise the Lord for that. If Bioware had actually wanted to be risky, we wouldn't have played Jedi and the Sith wouldn't have been the main nemesis. Good grief, people know it's Star Wars after somebody pulls a Lightsaber, fires a blaster, or does a Force-Push.

The Force Unleashed isn't a breath of fresh air as much as I'd like. Certainly not as much as Mass Effect or Jade Empire. But it's a start for Star Wars - actually exploring an era of history that is more than history in the Galaxy Far Far Away.

Knights of the Old Republic can never really be touched upon by another series because it's set FOUR THOUSAND years in the past. This is a bad thing. Think about it. You can't really have an in-joke short of "I have a bad feeling about this.", appearances by characters from KotoR is effectively impossible, and even touching on the events of KotoR will jerk you out of immersion - this stuff happened four thousand years ago! Most people couldn't tell you what was happening 100 years ago.

Let's take a mosey down History Lane for a moment. Around 2000 B.C...(BCE if you want to be PC)...well, that's around the dawn of the Chinese Bronze Age, Stonehenge was completed, the Latins (That'd be the ancestors of most of the European races) arrived in the Italian Penninsula...

Gee, I remember reading that about that in my history books...wait, no. KotoR has a massive issue that makes it quite unviable - it's enough alike that it's not new, but it's enough different that it's practically a different galaxy. It looks like another Galaxy in Star Wars that developed on a similar, but slower path. And if too many fans of this appear, then they've got a serious problem - the bridge between the 'Modern' SW Era and KotoR is Four Thousand Freaking Years.

Well...Galaxies proved us every single (standard*) Star Wars fan wants to swing a lightsaber, even destroying the game with 2 million Jedi running around.

If a fanboy* would have to choose between fighting with an unknown, not from the movies-character, they might not buy the game. It's simple fact...

*=
Most of the people here (especially the ones in the roleplaying or fanfic threads) have a 'wider' view of Star Wars. What's wrong with playing a smuggler or non-force sensitive? Too bad most 'fanboys' want to play with movie characters. The same thing led to all the cameo's in the Star Wars games.
Most of you must have played Jedi Academy. It features cameo's of: Luke Skywalker, Kyle Katarn, Chewbacca, Millennium Falcon, Darth Vader (although just a statue), Echo Base, C-3po, r2-d2 and many more. Of course it's nice, but it's in essence nothing more then fanboy loving.

I'm afraid Kotor 3 has become the victim of this. Why give the people an original game with a new backstory when you can throw in 27.034 cameo's into a Vader action game and be sure to drown in the money you make?

It's all a matter of Lucasarts weighing up the risks of different strategies to determine which one would allow them to create as much revenue as possible. It's sad, but it's true.

It's not sad, it's LA being what it is: a business. Unless you don't want SW games at all, I don't see why LA doesn't need the money anyway. You're exactly right-as a product in demand goes up, so do the ways of making it.

Sadly, LA is a business, and not free of expenses. I think it needs better PR, for sure, but it's not trying to trick you.